In her third column counting down to Women's Rugby World Cup 2010, Sweden captain Ulrika Andersson-Hall looks back on two training matches in Amsterdam and a piece of history with the election of a new President.
The biggest news from Swedish rugby this month is undoubtedly the fact that we have elected a female President of our national rugby federation.
Despite rugby being a minority sport here and Sweden being on the forefront when it comes to equality, the election still made a decent splash in the media since female Presidents are not common in such male dominated sports.
Stina Leijonhufvud, the newly elected President and I'm told only the fourth female to currently hold such a position among all of the International Rugby Board's Member Unions, is well known in rugby playing circles.
JOIN THE WOMEN'S RUGBY WORLD CUP 2010 FACEBOOK PAGE!
BUY TICKETS FOR WOMEN'S RUGBY WORLD CUP 2010 >>
Apart from being a great player and try-scorer for Stockholm Exiles and Sweden until a knee-injury forced her to quit a few years back, she has also done tremendous work for the Federation as a treasurer.
Stina also did a great job during the Women's Rugby World Cup qualifiers held in Stockholm last May, where among a lot of other things she was responsible for the media coverage, which as I have said in my previous columns was fantastic and a big part of our success.
One of Stina's biggest challenges ahead is to make rugby better known and to increase recruitment, especially amongst the youth of Sweden.
There is no better time for that now with the Swedish women bound for the World Cup, our Under 18 boys just qualified for Group B of the European Championship and Sevens becoming an Olympic sport.
I can't see a better person than Stina to lead the development of rugby in Sweden.
Grass ... finally!
On a personal note, I'm very happy to see one of my former teammates take on important positions in Swedish rugby, another to have done so being our assistant national team coach Jane Hodson.
A fact for the curious is that we now have a President and a women's captain of the same age and with the same number of kids...
On the pitch, the big news for our national team is that we have now played on grass!
After the never-ending winter of indoor training, it was good to head south to the Netherlands over Easter to get some practice and game time on turf. In less than four days we managed to squeeze in four practices and two matches.
It was nice to get the whole squad together for the first time, including players from Australia, Malaysia and England. As always we had a superb team atmosphere and everyone got at least two halves of game time over the weekend.
Important next step
Despite losing both games (19-0 and 20-7) I think it was a successful trip in that we worked a lot on our game plan and in parts we played some good rugby when faced with opposition.
It was clear though that we were out of season with poor match fitness, slow reaction time and quite a lot of mistakes being made. The Dutch team were tough opposition as always and they were very clinical in their finishing.
From our point of view we have to take the positives from this tour and have patience and belief that there is enough time and rugby games to get things right for the World Cup in England.
Our next, and very important, step is the European Trophy in Strasbourg in May, when we will face Russia, Germany and Italy - one of the sides we beat to qualify for the World Cup - in the pool stages.
Next week we catch up with Julianne Zussman, fresh from a week-long training camp with the Canada women's squad.
